units, and St. Louis-based McCormack
Baron Salazar’s $55-million Rivertown
development, which will brings hundreds
of new apartments, many of them affordable, to the riverfront just east of GM.

In addition to refurbishing its existing
campus, last year DTE bought an abandoned Salvation Army building and has
begun making plans to transform some
nearby land, perhaps into a neighborhood
farmers’ market.

But Nuno says DTE also wants to makesure all of the corporations in the neighbor-hood sit down together and “think aboutthis strategically and not in silos. It’s notsomething we can do alone.”The migration started by Compuware,Quicken and others should continue. LoweCampbell Ewald, a national marketingagency, plans to move about 600 employeesout of suburban Warren by early 2014 andtake roughly 120,000 square feet of space inthe Ford Field Office Complex. The movewill give the agency a chance to revamp itsbusiness environment and bring it up tomodern standards, says CEO Jim Palmer.

“People wanted a better working envi-ronment. We studied a lot of buildouts atother agencies, and even though it’s goingto be a bit of a culture shock, we’ve beenbehind cubes and hidden in offices for toolong. People need to feed off other peo-ple’s excitement.”The agency’s new home in the complex’sold J.L. Hudson Warehouse will have anopen, collaborative design, with most work-ers sitting together. The building features afloor-to-ceiling atrium and “you can lookacross the five floors of the agency and seeall the work being done.”The agency’s present offices weredesigned in the 1970s, and the companyhad long planned to shift away from atraditional office environment, butchoosing a downtown location simplifiedthe transition.“We could have done this in the suburbs,but probably not as easily.” For one thing,the suburbs did not have the same range ofchoices. Whereas, after sifting through theavailable downtown space, “we had a dozendifferent ways of doing it.” The firm couldhave reconfigured a high-rise space, forexample, but ultimately decided that therehabbed warehouse with its light, spaceReal estate Midwest...continued on p75dte energy has been a fixture in downtown detroitfor decades, but it has recommitted to its neighbor-hood by buying an abandoned salvation armybuilding (foreground) with plans to redevelop it.